


What Happens To Us

by Theyna_Shipper



Series: TlJ (And Post TLJ) "What-ifs" [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And They Were Bunkermates, Bunker, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, No you guys he's literally a wheel, Post-TLJ, Quarantine, Sharing a Bed, Third Wheel BB-8, Trapped, cuteness, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23353930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theyna_Shipper/pseuds/Theyna_Shipper
Summary: Trapped in a bunker on a desolate planet, Rey and Ben Solo are forced into each other’s company.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: TlJ (And Post TLJ) "What-ifs" [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1653646
Comments: 13
Kudos: 90





	What Happens To Us

**Author's Note:**

> Am I writing this because I’m tired of day 14 of quarantine? Possibly. Hopefully it makes your quarantine better.

Rey’s landing gear screeches as it emerges from the underbelly of the ship, making it clear it does not plan on being of any help in her landing. BB-8 beeps with agitation. 

“I know buddy, I know,” Rey mutters, twirling the knobs. 

After having finally evaded the TIEs that were pursuing, she’d attempted to land to appraise the damage on her ship, but the damage was making the landing near-impossible. She doesn’t even know what planet this is that she’s crashing on, except that it has abandoned shelters she can use for as long as she’ll be marooned. 

The whole workings of the ship give a painful shriek against the rock terrain, but skids to a halt, leaving Rey and BB-8 reasonably undamaged. But the second she emerges to assess the repairs, something is wrong. 

Her lungs seize up and her vision clouds. The air is thick and heavy, and she recognizes the scent within seconds: poisonous gas. 

She straps her gas mask on as quickly as she can, but it’s old and will only last her so long, really only slowing the process. 

BB-8 beeps urgently at her side. _There’s an airlocked bomb shelter south of here!_

It’s good enough for Rey. She sprints in that direction, the droid rolling as fast as possible at her side. About three hundred yards from the shelter, a second figure in a gas mask joins Rey in her sprint. They arrive at the same time, and BB-8 picks the lock on the door. Rey tugs it open, letting the droid and the other person in before leaping down. 

“Check the airlocks!” she shouts through her mask. “There should be one on each side.”

Rey tugs down on the door, twisting a wheel until it clicks. A few moments later, a second _click_ comes from the opposite side of the tiny room, and the light next to the door turns green. 

“Safe?” the other person grunts in a deep voice. Rey nods, and they unbuckle their gas masks. 

They both cough until their throats are raw, and Rey collapses against the wall, panting to replenish her lungs. Finally she looks up to gauge her bunker-mate. 

“So how did you-” Her breath catches again, but this time, it’s not the gas. 

_“You,”_ he whispers. 

Words fail her. After the emotional rollercoaster he’d led her on, the tense Force bonds that had followed, now Kylo- Ben- was _here, right here_ , in this tiny room with her, in the flesh. She felt an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch him.

“What are you doing here?” she snaps, springing to her feet. 

“Same as you,” he returns coolly. “Marooned.”

“And how did the _Supreme Leader_ get marooned on an abandoned, gassed out planet by himself?”

He winces. “Please don’t call me that.”

Rey crosses her arms. “You chose that.” A strange look passes across his face. Is it- regret? 

“If you must know, I wasn’t on official business.” He sits down on a box.

Rey raises her eyebrows “And they let you go by yourself.”

The faintest ghost of a smile- a smirk, really- creeps across his lips. “They didn’t exactly let me.”

“You bolted.”

“I needed fresh air.”

“Well, you got plenty of that,” Rey snorts, buckling her gas mask back to her bag and organizing her things. She sets her bag down on the tiny metal table and opens one of the cupboards. 

“What are you doing?”

“Taking inventory.” She pulls down a heavy box from the lowest shelf. “We’re stuck here for an indefinite amount of time together, we might as well know what we’re in for. Don’t think I won’t let you starve,” she adds, going through the cans. 

He goes to stand up, then considers their cramped quarters, and decides to stay out of the way. 

“These are all useless,” Rey announces, setting the canned goods on the floor. 

He cocks an eyebrow. “They’re canned, do they even go bad?”

“They can, it just takes a while,” she replies. “And even so, the seal on these is damaged.” She gestures to the rim of the can. “So if you want botulism, be my guest, but I’m leaving these alone.”

She pulls down a stack of instant bread and ration bars. “These are still good. Where’s the water?” 

He stands up and walks over to a sink on the other side of the room. He twists the spigot, and it disgorges a quantity of brown liquid before weakly dripping some very suspicious water. “We’d better hope there’s more elsewhere.”

“I can’t see what’s on this top shelf, come help me.”

They lock eyes. It’s strange, that these simple words trigger so much between them, but the fact remains that she’s asking him for help. 

_“Why? Why did you do it?” Tears stream silently down Rey’s face. “I would have helped you. We could have helped each other.”_

_“This wasn’t what I wanted.” Ben shakes his head “This isn’t what I asked you for. I asked you to abandon it all- the Order, the Resistance, the Light, the Dark. To run away with me. All I wanted was to be together. But you said no.”_

_“But you wanted to keep the Light at bay even more.”_

_“I had a home in the Darkness.”_

_She closes her eyes, tips her head back, takes a long breath. “Then is this good-bye?”_

_“If it has to be.”_

_Rey nods. Ben does too._

_But in their final moments together, they come together, not apart. Rey reaches up to touch his face, her fingers barely skimming the skin. She leans forward to press a farewell kiss upon his lips, to give them both a glimpse of what they’d given up._

_But he dissolves underneath her fingertips as their Bond severs._

_It is over, and he does not return._

Ben walks over to the cupboard so that he is standing behind Rey. He reaches up towards the top shelf, but it is high even for him. He puts a hand on her shoulder for stability so he can stretch up farther. 

Rey’s skin burns underneath his touch. The pressure of another human is rare. 

Then the pressure is gone, and he pulls down a few bags of dried fruit. 

Rey deems them edible, then divides the food into portions. 

“A week’s worth, for two people,” she announces. “If this is it.”

“I don’t have any with me.”

“Me neither.” She opens a cupboard underneath the counter, and emerges grinning. “Jackpot.”

He looks for himself, and returns with enough bottled water to last them, the seals completely unbroken. 

“You keep looking in here, I’m checking what’s in the back room.” 

They are focusing on the immediate concern- staying alive- so they don’t have to focus on the less immediate one- staying alive with each other. Ben takes inventory of the room, the only other supplies being in the box he’d claimed as a seat. They regroup at the tiny table. 

“Not much. Mostly the air filter. Cot. What did you find?”

“Soap, antiperspirant, blanket, pillow.” 

Rey puts the soap and antiperspirant with their other supplies. Ben takes the blanket and pillow to the cot. 

“What do you know about this gas?”

“What?”

“The planet was gassed out by the First Order so the Resistance couldn’t dock on it. So how long will it take to clear.”

He pauses to think. “About forty-eight hours.”

“So we should stay sixty to give it plenty of time. I’m not taking any risks. And that doesn’t include transport off.”

“Does your ship still have fuel?”

“Yes, but it’s a mangled wreck.”

“Mine is fine, it just is almost out of fuel. If we can take the fuel from yours and bring it to mine, we should make it.”

Rey raises an eyebrow. “My ship is an ancient X-wing that breaks if you fill its tank all the way. Yours is a new and constantly updated TIE with large fuel needs, although extremely resilient and long lasting.”

He realizes she’s taken an awful lot of notes on his ship. “So you’re saying mine couldn’t run on your fuel.”

Rey nodded. “But I have a shortwave radio that, if I hook it up to BB’s communication circuits, might be able to get Resistance rescue.”

“Resistance-”

“-is the only possible rescue for us. Or you can die here. Your choice.”

“Perhaps I’ll take my chances with the underfueld ship.”

“We’ll see.”

They spend the next few hours in near-silence, sorting and rationing the materials, and making the bunker liveable. The air is tense as they both grow to acknowledge the fact that there’s a lot of things they aren’t acknowledging. 

He leaves to go check the air filter. Rey puts BB-8 and her radio on the table and opens them up, checking the wiring on the circuits. 

She doesn’t know how much time passes occupied in this way- hours, probably- until Ben walks in and tells her to take a break. 

“Why do you care?”

“We have to stay alive together, so I care about what keeps you alive.”

Rey smirks. “How very kind of you.” 

He hands her a bottle of water. “How’s it going?”

She shrugs. “I’ll get it when I get it. Filter good?” 

He nods. They’re quiet for a bit. “What were you doing in this system?”

“None of your business.”

“Indulge me.”

“If you must know, I was scouting your troops. I was chased and had to shake them.”

“And you’re telling me all this.”

Rey cracks her neck. “Does it matter? The war is over.”

He purses his lips. “Do you really think so?”

“Of course. And so do you. Everyone’s tired of this. They'll have one more engagement, light losses on both sides. The next day- assuming you’re not back by then, Hux will have put himself in charge- they’ll both approach each other with offers of an armistice.”

Ben nods. “A hasty cease-fire will be declared. It will be breached once and then reinstated. After a few months of negotiations, they’ll come to an agreement and a new government will be instated.”

He notices the detachment with which they speak of the armies- as if they aren’t really a part of them. She notices too. 

“And what happens to us, Rey?”

“What happens to us? What happens to you, Ben?” Empires will fall, and his thoughts will always fall to pieces when she says his name. “Maybe you’re tried for war crimes. Maybe you escape to live in anonymity in the far reaches. Either way, you’re as lonely as you’ve always been, trapped in that crowded head of yours.”

“I die miserable and alone,” he confirms. “And you, Rey? What happens to you? You spend the rest of your life decoding those Jedi texts before realizing you don’t have any left to read them. You leave your friends, because the Force claims you for its prey. No one forgets you, but no one sees you again. You’re a piece of dust lost in the vast expanse of space.”

“I will die alone, too. And ‘us’-” she gestures between them- “Never happens again. We never talk about it to anyone. We’re forgotten. Both the parents and the children of a pointless war and a broken galaxy.”

“Some people were born for tragedy.”

“So you believe in fate?”

“You and I are awfully religious not to.”

Religion implies faith. She wonders what he has faith in. 

Rey yawns into her hand. “We should get some sleep. We’ll share the cot.” A flush creeps across both their faces. “For warmth.”

Ben nods, and they both go to the back room, stripping to their pants and undershirts. The cot is wider than necessary to accommodate one person, but is still quite small for the two of them back-to-back. 

“That’s not what you meant, is it?” Rey asks into the darkness. 

“Hm?”

“When you asked what happens to us. You didn’t mean what happens to you and me. You meant what happens to _us._ ”

“I suppose.”

“You’d call that fate, wouldn’t you?”

“What are the odds of this, Rey? I believe things happen for a reason.”

“Fate is cruel, in that case.”

“But we were born knowing that.”

“If we found each other for a reason, why did we lose each other?”

“Clearly we didn’t.”

“If this is fate, then someone in the Universe is very obstinate about it,” Rey huffs. 

“Good night, Rey.”

His tone is abrupt, but gentle, not dismissive. Rey pillows her head on her arm and drifts into dreamless sleep. 

********

Ben wakes up to the smell of stale air and the warmth of another body pressed against his. It takes him a moment to remember where he is and how he got there, and then it rushes back to him in a confusing tangle. Moving as little as he can, he turns his head to look at Rey, still asleep in the tiny cot. They’d shifted closer together in the night, to the point where their legs are entangled. At least they hadn’t dragged each other off. 

After a few minutes, Rey wakes up. She shifts and mumbles for a moment before feeling him in the bed, and immediately freezes. 

“You up?” she whispers. 

“Yeah.”

She sits up, kicking her legs over the edge of the bed. Ben does the same. 

Rey’s hair is down. She’d taken it down before bed last night. How had he not noticed? It frames her face elegantly. 

He realizes he’s staring, and looks away as she tugs on her tunic. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” Her entire body is sore from the awkward position she’d slept in, but she was too tired to notice last night. “You?”

“About the same.” He rolls out his neck and finishes lacing his boot. They walk into the main room. 

“I would kill for some caf right now,” Rey remarks. 

“Wouldn’t we all.” He unwraps a ration bar. “Hungry?”

“Not really.” 

He breaks the bar and half and hands it to her. “Me neither.”

Rey takes a bite out of her half. “It’s been sixteen hours. Since the gas.”

“Forty-four to go. At least.”

“Oh, that reminds me-” Rey walks over to BB-8, who had powered down last night to save energy. She flicks a switch, and he wakes up. The tiny droid looks between Rey and Ben with what might be called suspicion, and rolls away beeping. Rey smiles at the little orange ball. 

She doesn’t notice Ben watching her smile. 

Rey spends several more hours that day working on the radio. She’s about ready to give up when a crackle of static is interrupted by a grunt. 

“Hello?” she shouts into the mouthpiece. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s this?” the female voice from the other end demands. 

Rey hesitates before giving her name. 

“Rey! You’re OK! We thought you’d crashed, where are you? This is Rose, by the way.”

“Rose!” Rey grins. She explains how she’d crashed on the gassed-out planet and hid in the bomb shelter, and how her ship is completely destroyed. 

Rose’s silence makes Rey uncomfortable. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how quickly we can get rescue, we’re strapped as it is. How are your supplies?”

“About a week, more if we make them stretch.”

“‘We’?”

Rey flushes. “Me and BB.”

“Oh, right.” Rose promises she’ll see what she can do, but doesn’t sound hopeful. 

“Better than nothing,” Rey remarks. “But still not great.”

“So we’re as stuck as we were.”

“Get settled in.”

*******

There’s literally nothing to do except talk to each other. And there’s not a lot of shallower topics for them to discuss. 

“I almost took it,” Rey blurts out impulsively. Having him this close, all the time, makes it impossible for her to keep her thoughts from straying to what they could have had. “Your hand.”

“I know.”

“Should I have?”

“I don’t know.” He pauses. “I almost didn’t offer it. Should I have not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe this was fate.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“I believe that there’s an answer for everything. Not necessarily a reason.”

“And what’s the answer to-” he gestures around the bunker- “this?”

“Us.”

They don’t sleep back to back. They tell themselves it’s to save space on the tiny cot. Sleeping on his chest is more comfortable than sleeping on a tiny strip of mattress. It makes it easier to share the blanket and to stay warm. 

It has nothing to do with the comfortable way in which their breaths mix in the air between them, in the comforting weight of Rey upon his chest, in the gentle reassurance of his arm on her back, of her soft hair mixing with his on the pillow. Of the rhythm of each other’s breath and heartbeat lulling them to sleep. 

To sleep as long as they want is a luxury they’re little used to. Rey wakes up early, but when there’s no scramble around her or glaring sun, she falls back to sleep without even taking in her surroundings. She doesn’t need to wonder about the warmth or comfort; she has learned not to question good things when they are given. 

They wake up several hours later, more rested than either of them have felt since- well, it’s been a long time. Rey feels a hand on her back; Ben feels arms wrapped around his shoulders. They’d moved to more comfortable positions in their sleep, it would seem. 

Rey props herself up on her elbows and finds herself face-to-face with him, but this time isn't’ eager to withdraw. The stirring sea of emotions in his eyes only ripples gently in the morning calm. 

“Good morning,” Ben says, sitting up slightly. 

“Morning,” Rey yawns. “Sleep better?”

“Much.” A shy smile crosses his lips, and suddenly Rey remembers why she’d fought so hard for him once. 

But with this she’s also reminded why she was forced to stop. And as always, she’s hit with a wave of regret and melancholy at what was lost. 

With these thoughts at the surface of her mind, she doesn’t realize Ben must have heard them too. This close, they have few secrets they can keep from each other. 

“It doesn’t have to be lost,” he tells her. 

“But do you remember the reasons why it was? Why we had to give up?” This blend of yearning and hesitance is a unique sort of pain. “You told me I was nothing,” she whispers. 

He sits up so that she is sitting in his lap. “You’re everything to me.”

Rey moves herself off of him, perches on the edge of the bed. “I don’t want to be nothing. And I don’t want to be your everything. I just want to be, without anything else, to be _something_.”

Rey grabs her tunic and boots and leaves. She gets dressed, powers up BB-8, and checks the supplies for the hundred thousandth time. But the menial tasks are better than idleness, because between the isolation and boredom, it’s too easy to get trapped in her own head. She can keep the worries at bay if she just focuses on the bubbles on the instant bread, rising and falling as it solidifies...

She’s dangerously close to getting lost like this when the sound of footsteps distracts her. After frustrated (although justified) outburst, she does not acknowledge him. 

“Rey.” She remains silent. 

He seats himself across from her. “You are something.” 

She flicks her eyes up, then back to the table. 

“You’re resilient. You’re surprising. You’re strong; you’re powerful; you’re versatile; you’re passionate; you’re peaceful.”

She looks up into his dark, pleading eyes.

“You are far from nothing.

“But you don’t have to be everything.

“There’s only one thing I could possibly ask you to be.

“Just _be_.”

His hand is on the table, creeping towards hers. She brushes her fingertips against his, at first hesitantly, then more confidently, twisting them together. 

She leans forward; so does he. Their eyes meet in a starry glance of longing and trust.

It’s interrupted by a crash as the cans Rey had discarded begin rolling across the floor, BB-8 scurrying to pick up the mess he’s made. Rey pulls her hand away and goes to the floor, cheeks burning. 

**********

“What are we supposed to _do_?” Rey sighs, sitting cross-legged on the crate, eating from a bag of dates. “For days.”

“We could talk to each other,” he suggests drily.

“Truth or dare,” Rey challenges.

“That’s a children’s game.”

“Poe plays it with the other pilots. Well, truth or drink. But we don’t have anything to drink.”

“Well then, truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“I dare you to tell me the truth.”

Rey laughs. “You can’t do that.”

He cocks his head at her. She sighs in surrender. “Favorite color?” he asks.

“Green,” Rey replies. “I never saw more of it than a leaf or two at a time. Then I came to Takodana and it was _everywhere_. I couldn’t take it all in.” She hasn’t seen green like that in a long time. “What’s yours? Black?” she teases. 

“It’s orange, actually. Like a sunset, where the sky looks like it’s on fire, except it’s not, and you’re not scared, because it’s beautiful.”

Rey thinks of the brilliant sunset every night on Jakku. She supposes that on Takodana, people took the green for granted. Did she take these brilliant colors for granted? Probably. 

They continue passing questions back and forth, across the table, about what they like and don’t like, what they’ve done and haven’t done, what they want to do and what they’re scared to do. 

“Tell me a secret,” Ben whispers, leaning forwards towards her. 

But this time, Rey pulls away, the uncertainty making a reappearance. “It’s time for bed.”

“That’s not a secret.”

But they do go back to bed, and sleep as they did before, chest to chest and cheek to cheek, listening to the sounds of each other’s breath. 

***********

Rey sips water while staring out the window that’s almost at the ceiling. It’s been over forty-eight hours, but she wants to take no chances. 

“What’s your droid doing?” Ben asks, listening to BB-8 alternate between static, beeps, and other sounds. 

“Checking the radio channels I hooked him up to, I imagine,” Rey replies. “Droids get bored, too.”

Eventually, BB settles on a music station, letting the soothing sounds fill the room. 

“This sounds like a dance,” Rey remarks. 

“Do you know how to dance?”

Rey shakes her head. “But I’ve always wanted to.”

“I can teach you,” he suggests. He offers her his hand, she takes it. He places her other hand on his shoulder, and puts hers on her waist, leading her gently around the room, navigating the furniture. Rey looks up at him, wraps her arm around his neck. Their foreheads touch, and they sway slowly in place. Ben pulls her close, and she parts her lips slightly, closing her eyes as the brush delicately against his. 

And as soon as they touch, she believes in fate, because it’s clear this is what the universe wants, what the universe has always wanted. The Force Bond, the connection, their unity in mind and soul- it has all culminated in this, the taste of his lips on hers, the press of his hand against her back…

They are startled apart by urgent beeping, as their music is interrupted by a different radio broadcast. 

_“After years of intergalactic war, a tentative cease-fire has been reached…”_ Rey doesn’t hear the rest, because it is drowned in her own joyful shriek. Ben has the same thought as her, and they instantly open the doors together, because they have to be _out_ and taste the freedom on the air, let the outside of their bodies match the inside of their souls. 

Rey drinks in the air, stale and desolate, but fresh, and new, and lets the cold and salty air sting her face, lets the tears pour down her cheeks. 

“It’s over,” she gasps, barely believing the truth of her own prediction. “The war is over.”

But Ben is not as eager as she is, looks at her with a sad reverence. “And what happens to us, Rey?”

“What happens to us?” She laughs. “We’re nobody.” She brushes a quick kiss against his lips. “Just pieces of dust lost in the vast expanse of space.” Another kiss. “We’re nothing.” She pulls him in for another kiss, this one longer and more meaningful. 

And he responds in a whisper: _”Not to me.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and feedback appreciated!


End file.
